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In the recollections of this voyage, even in Jack's recollections of it after he had paid the bills, it seemed that it had been simply glorious, free from care, generally a physical setting-up performance, and a lark of enormous magnitude. And everybody envied the fortunate sailors.
He's got savvy!" He was politely attentive, if not enthusiastic, when Johnnie told him more about Mr. Johnnie did all the setting-up exercises for the Westerner, too; and, as a final touch, displayed for his inspection an indisputably clean neck! But Johnnie had saved till the last the crowning news of all.
After the reports the physical drill, or setting-up exercises, is the order. These calisthenics are similar to that drill in the army. It was on this third day that the boys were assigned to the watches and to their divisions for the cruise. The ship's company is divided into port and starboard watches, each watch being organized into divisions.
Mankind is divided into two classes, those who do setting-up exercises before breakfast and those who know they ought to but don't. To the former and more praiseworthy class Wally had belonged since boyhood. Life might be vain and the world a void, but still he touched his toes the prescribed number of times and twisted his muscular body about according to the ritual.
The system is a combination of setting-up exercises with outdoor work, all carefully and precisely laid out after twenty years of experience in conditioning men. It should be followed absolutely, not partially or occasionally. It is far from severe. Its strength lies in the cumulative effect rather than in any special effort at any one time.
And Frewen was a mascotte, and his half-caste boat-steerer was another, for whenever a pod of whales were sighted the second mate's boat was invariably the first to get fast, and on one glorious day off Sunday Island Frewen's boat killed three sperms a bull and two cows and the four other boats each got one or two, so that for over a week, in a calm sea, and under a cloudless sky of blue by day and night, "cutting in" and "trying-out" went on merrily, and the cooper and his mates toiled like Trojans, setting-up fresh barrels; and the smoke and glare of the try-works from the deck of the Casilda lit up the placid ocean for many a mile, whilst hordes of blue sharks rived and tore and ripped off the rich blubber from the whales lying alongside waiting to be cut-in, and Keller shot or lanced them by the score as he stood on the cutting-in stage or in one of the boats made fast to the chains on the free side.
How the anxious candidates wished they really could stand as this handsome young son of Mars did! To them it seemed impossible ever to acquire such truly military carriage. They did not realize that, between drills, gymnasium work and the setting-up drills, they would, in a few weeks, be hard to distinguish in elegance and perfection from their present instructor.
He went through his setting-up exercises mechanically. He could almost smell the tang of a wood fire burning. There was work tonight in identifying leaves and barks of trees, and stems of plants. Tim twisted restlessly. The moment the meeting was over he followed Don down the room. "How far apart will they put us in the woods?" he demanded. Don didn't know.
Is it any wonder that we abandoned such "setting-up"? Again, it was pointed out how, by special exercises, a man might increase his biceps two or three inches in a year and the calves of his legs an inch or two! Now what was the average man to do this for? What was the object? To admire himself in the mirror? Or did he intend to make of himself a professional weightlifter?
Otherwise there seemed to be no very great reason why Kent should not get on his feet. He smiled apologetically. "Seems queer to say that, when a little while ago I was telling you it was time to die," he said. That night, after ten o'clock, Kent went through his setting-up exercises four times. He marveled even more than the preceding night at the swiftness with which his strength was returning.
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